Top Five Stoner Snacks

I've never been much of a pot smoker. In fact, I've only been high twice in my life, and both were thoroughly miserable experiences. Maybe the shit I tried is just too powerful for someone who never smokes, or maybe you're not to smoke up while you're also taking anti-depressants, but whatever the case, I got all of the negative side effects (nausea, dizziness, paranoia, anxiety) and none of the good (mellowness, increased silliness, ravenous appetite, and an appreciation for the first couple of Genesis albums).

I needn't have bothered, really. I've had multiple people tell me I eat like a stoner, and having hung around with plenty of pot-smokers in high school and college, I can say that they are absolutely correct. Something about possessing pre-diabetic blood sugar issues and absolutely no self-discipline whatsoever can lead one into some pretty gruesome eating binges, it turns out, and in the depths of my deepest cravings, I've found a surprising affinity for the junk food of my lit-up brethren, down to the point of troublingly specific minutiae. I can tell you better then even most habitual smokers which snacks are best for the stoned.

Disappointing. Tasted NOTHING like turtles.

5. Chex Mix The real difficulty with Chex Mix is not in finding it - it's plentiful in most grocery stores and gas stations - but in choosing a flavor. Do you go with the Traditional flavor, or do you need more Cheese? Could you stand an entire bag of the Hot 'n' Spicy variety, or do you dare tackle the question of what makes the Bold flavor so gosh darn bold? (Hint: it seems to pretty much be Worcestershire sauce.) And oh dear God, what about all these Salty & Sweet options with tiny M&M-like candies and chocolate and caramel and who knows what else? Odds are, you'll pick up three or four different varieties rather than make up your mind, and that's fine, but first consider this: the recipe is pretty easy to make, and with just a couple of boxes of Chex and a few personalized tweaks to the recipe, you could have an entire gigantic tub of custom Chex Mix all to yourself. Just saying.

I hope whoever decided to do this got a hell of a bonus.

4. Gardetto's Special Rye Pieces Anyone who has eaten Gardetto's Snack Mix knows that the best pieces are the little rye bread chips. I don't know what they put on that shit to make rye bread palatable, but God bless 'em. Some forward-thinker at Gardetto's realized that people would pay handsomely for those pieces without all the filler, and every stoner's dream of a rye-bread-only sack of Gardetto's became a reality. It costs a little more than other snack mixes, but it's so worth it, and best of all pairs extremely well with Dr Pepper. If you're thinking "Wait, isn't that two snack mixes in a row? What is this crap?" then you can fuck right off, as you clearly don't have the capacity for true junk food differentiation which is required for this list.

The Flintstones no longer shill cigarettes, but they're still killing you slowly, kids.

3. Marshmallow Pebbles Of all the cereals you develop a sudden, intense appreciation for when stoned or in the throes of a blood sugar crisis, Lucky Charms is usually the winner. Well, I'm here to tell you: Lucky Charms is not king of the marshmallow hill anymore. It's still great, but Marshmallow Pebbles is better. Way better. The pebbles taste better than the boring oat pieces in Lucky Charms, and said pebbles are also smaller, which gives at least an illusion of getting more marshmallows per bowl. The box is small, but that's because the cereal bits are smaller than most other cereals and therefore more dense. Don't be put off by the box size, go ahead and make the switch. You won't be sorry.

Now THAT'S what I call a goddamn party pizza.

2. Pizza Rolls It's not as common as the craving for salty things, but sometimes the craving for something hot does kick in, post-toke. When that happens, it's best to have plenty of pizza rolls on hand. Brand name or knock-off, it doesn't really matter, because nobody's making these damn things to gourmet standards and that's how we like it. If you can, try and resist the urge to simply drop them in the microwave, because they come out like tasty little pizza-and-leather bites. Put them in the oven and wait for ten minutes, and set the timer so you don't get so involved in your Futurama marathon that you forget they're in the oven and burn your house down. The crispy deliciousness of a properly baked pizza roll cannot be overstated, but I'm going to try: eating one is like eating a baked unicorn foreskin stuffed to the brim with delicious little flavor angels, whose screams as they are chewed to pieces only embolden the spices.

Yup, they're crab-flavored. Might want to chew on some gum before the girlfriend comes over.

1. Foreign Chips At first you may be tempted to once again go home with those Nacho Cheese Doritos, but hold on. This time you've got a craving for something different. Something adventurous and maybe even a little dangerous. In that case, look no further than your store's "Ethnic Food" aisle for all the bizarre, exotic flavors you could ever want. Lamb and Mint? Got 'em. Bacon? Of course. Shrimp 'n' Dill Pickle? Hell, probably. Foreign people have been raised with an entirely different set of taste buds than you, and once you've tried their cuisine, you may very well be waking up flavor receptors you didn't even know you had. Or you'll puke so hard you break blood vessels in your eyes and look like a demon for about a week and a half. Either way, this is going to be a big win for you.